He knew he was a big deal—he had a healthy ego and an accurate sense of his accomplishments. But I’m confident that he would be stunned at the magnitude of the reaction to his death, especially among people who never met him.

It shouldn’t be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can’t have individuals taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they’ve been unjustly imprisoned—not even on grounds of mistaken identity.

Clinton’s speech Saturday conceding the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama couldn’t have been classier—and couldn’t have been more auspicious for the party’s chances of capturing the White House in November.

There will be plenty of time to chart Barack Obama’s attempt to navigate a course between the exigencies of the old politics and the promise of the new, between yesterday and tomorrow, youth and experience, black and white. For now, take a moment to consider the mind-bending improbability of what just happened.

Other than providing Fidel Castro with a convenient antagonist to help him whip up nationalist fervor—and thus prolong his rule—the U.S. trade embargo and other sanctions have accomplished precisely nothing.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has rejected a statue intended to stand at the memorial of Martin Luther King. The members expected a more passive depiction. Clearly the commission has some brushing up to do on American history.

Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That’s why she is falling short—and that’s why she should be persuaded to quit now, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.

That might be going too far for a show that still averages 28.7 million viewers, but ratings are down. In part, the cause is the presence of an even more exciting reality show on television, and it’s not even really a show.

Who picked this movie? A few months ago, the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination looked as if it would be the feel-good political campaign of the decade, if not the century. Instead, we’re having to endure an endless loop of “Alien vs. Predator.”

Hillary “Shot-and-a-Beer” Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what’s so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as “I seem, therefore I am.”

Much has changed in the years since Martin Luther King Jr.‘s death, and yet many black Americans struggle now more than ever. We must acknowledge progress if we are to take up the work that is left incomplete.

Talk about not being able to catch a break. To pummel a boxing metaphor, it was Barack Obama who got tagged with a roundhouse right, flush on the chin—but it was Hillary Clinton, from early indications, who ended up nursing a sore jaw and wondering what it was that hit her.

Four thousand. When U.S. military deaths in Iraq hit a round number, as happened Sunday, there’s usually a week or so of intense focus on the war—its bogus rationale, its nebulous aims, its awful consequences for the families of the dead. Not likely this time, though.

Barack Obama tells the columnist why he chose to ignore the collective political wisdom and confront the issue of race head-on. Having survived the encounter, his speech on the subject could change the way Americans understand one another.

The Democratic presidential candidates squabble over real or imagined racial sensitivities, the Republican presidential candidate stages photo opportunities with the troops in Iraq, and meanwhile the financial system is coming apart at the seams.

It was Prince Harry’s dream to fight in a war, and the British press, normally cutthroat, agreed to let him live it. How sweet. If only it didn’t violate the obligations of journalists to their readers.

If you’re among those who believe the news media have focused too much on the presidential horse race and the personalities of the candidates—and not enough on vital issues of state—let me submit that you’re wrong.

Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators—as Bill Clinton suggested but didn’t quite come out and say in a radio interview Tuesday—basically in the tank for Barack Obama?

It is insane to waste time and energy worrying that somewhere, doubtless in a high-tech subterranean lair, Republican masterminds are cackling over their diabolical plot: The use of reverse psychology to lure unsuspecting Democrats into nominating Barack Obama, an innocent lamb who will be chewed up by the attack machine in the fall. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The campaign for the White House is great fun, but it can also be a distraction. While the leading contenders to replace Bush continue to duke it out, the president and his lieutenants are still trying to justify torture in the name of protecting this once great democracy.

When you Google the phrase “unconstitutional third term,” you get references to a rogue’s gallery of strongman leaders—Vladimir Putin, Alberto Fujimori, Olusegun Obasanjo, Islam Karimov, Hugo Chavez—who in recent years at least have flirted with the idea of holding on to power beyond statutory limits. Now the name Bill Clinton pops up, too.

Now that the presidential field has been winnowed to four—barring a miraculous return by one of the contestants recently voted off the island—the new national pastime is gaming the electability factor.

Playing the race card against Barack Obama didn’t work out quite the way Bill Clinton had hoped. Neither did a reported last-minute personal appeal to keep Ted Kennedy, venerable guardian of the Camelot flame, from joining the Obama crusade. The question now is whether the Clintons understand how the country they seek to lead—and, regrettably, I do mean “they”—has changed.

Six months ago, Bill Clinton seemed to be settling comfortably into roles befitting a silver-maned former president: statesman, philanthropist, philosopher-king. Now he has put all that high-mindedness on hold—maybe it was never such a great fit, after all—to costar in his wife Hillary’s campaign as a coldblooded political hit man.

It turns out that Toni Morrison’s famous line about Bill Clinton as “our first black president” was just a bon mot. If the Clintons took it as a sign of African-Americans’ unconditional fealty, they were mistaken.

On April 2, 2002, the Los Angeles Dodgers played a home game against the San Francisco Giants, raising the question: If both pitcher and batter are artificially enhanced, does that level the playing field?

Is it foolish to think that a nation stained by centuries of slavery and racism is prepared to elect a black president? Rarely phrased so bluntly, that’s the central question posed by Barack Obama’s candidacy—especially for many African-American voters, whose doubts are informed by having seen many an oasis turn out to be a mirage.

We Americans like to think of ourselves as strong, rugged and supremely confident. So why do we find ourselves hunkered behind walls, popping pills to stave off diseases we might never contract and eyeing the rest of the world with suspicion that borders on the pathological?

The conventional wisdom says that celebrity endorsements don’t mean much in politics. But the conventional wisdom also says that enormously long, difficult novels published more than a century ago don’t suddenly become best-sellers today.

We think of the United States as a land of unlimited possibility, not so much a classless society, but as a place where class is mutable—a place where brains, energy and ambition are what counts, not the circumstances of one’s birth. But three important new studies suggest that Horatio Alger doesn’t live here anymore.